Category: expectations

Anyone who has lost his home to a climate of fear has a deep understanding of mankind’s capability for blind betrayal. The father of artist Judy Shintani was an American teenager when he and his family were interned at Tule Lake Incarceration Camp during WWII. Click here to read more.

Spent the day turning the soil and adding compost after finding the last few hidden potato jewels, bathed away the sweat and dirt, and put the used art materials from yesterday’s creating back into their places. Dinner was left over sausage pasta made crunchy by oven reheating. A mystery movie and a quick beginning reading of “Buddha in the Attic” before a sinking into a cozy bed. It’s been a precious day of small joys strung together to make a necklace of summer memories.

What does it mean that we are constantly changing? How do people confront ideas like death and change? Asked to contribute to an exhibit celebrating the work of the Dalai Lama, local multimedia artists David and Hi-Jin Hodge interviewed over a hundred people about impermanence and change in their lives. Their subjects ranged from philosophers to gardeners, economists to spiritual leaders, doctors to patients. The result was incredibly moving. The Hodges’ installation consisted of a large, circular arrangement of mounted iPods on which the interviews played simultaneously, each on its own screen. Now this unique record has been made available for a wider audience; it includes both a book and a DVD so that the interviews can be viewed as they were seen in the original exhibit.

The Hodges would like to invite all participants that were interviewed for this project to share with those of us at the event what has changed in their lives since they were filmed in 2006. What was impermanent for you?

David Hodge and Hi-jin Kong Hodge are internationally recognized artists, designers and filmmakers. Their artistic video installations explore a diverse range of topics, typically blending editorial materials and innovative uses of technology to explore complex human and social questions. The Hodges live in Half Moon Bay.

I’m reading a book right now called “Healthy at 100” by John Robbins. He writes, “The advancing age wave is the most significant demographic event of our life time and is taking place in every industrialized nation in the world”.

Robbins talks about how so many Americans do not look forward to old age because the model here is sickness, helplessness, and loneliness. He talks about other cultures where old age is revered and the elders are not called “old” they are called the “long living ones”. That that makes such a difference in the mentality and health of the whole community. In Abkhasia it would be considered an insult to be told that you are “looking young”. They compliment each other by saying “you are looking old today”. They mean that the person is wise and beautiful in their maturity.

The other cultures he writes about are in: Vilcabamba, Hunza, Okinawa. I’ll report on what I find out about these place next.

“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”

— Margaret Drabble (1939-) English Novelist

I think it is interesting that most of us do not think this way. We want to “know” what is going to happen. It is uncomfortable when we do not have a clear direction or answer. I wonder if this is an American pattern? Or is it a human way? What do you think?

In honor of Father’s Day I’m writing about my dad today. My dad just turned 80 years old last month and I think he looks young and handsome for his age. For his big birthday, some of the kids wanted to take him out for a nice dinner with some of his friends, but dad had something else in mind. He wanted to gather his kids back at the family home to shore up the backyard fence. This meant putting in about 15 new posts with cement and bracketing them. All this work was done on our neighbors’ side of the fence and meant that their swimming pool drainage system had to be moved and then reassembled again – as you can see in the photo. I thought it was weird that the neighbors never even came out of the house during all the activity, at least while I was around. My dad said it was better this way because they would have just slowed the whole thing down.

I was a little worried about going to the family home in Lodi. You see none of us really live there anymore. After my parents decided rather spur of the moment to move to Reno due to my mother’s Alzheimer’s condition three years ago, none of us spend much time there. Yet you know it was fine. It did not seem all that strange. We all barbecued a lovely dinner with too much food (so typically “Shintani”).

This ended up being the best party for my dad. He is such a doer. I think having his three sons, son-in-law, and nephew all working together to fix the fence and the daughter and daughter-in-laws in the kitchen, ended up being a perfect way to celebrate his 80th. It actually ended up being fun for all of us! I guess father does know best.

“A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on
the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of
continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves
in the cocoon of middle aged habit and convention.”– Aldous Huxley

I had a reaction to this quote when I first read it. I wondered if it was because of the gender reference? A “childlike man” did not appeal to me. Why? Is it because then I would feel I would have to take on the adult role with this person? Perhaps that is just me feeling as some has to be the adult! But maybe that is not the case at all…

What if the quote read a “childlike woman”? Still it rubs me the wrong way…I do not really want to be childlike – at least not all the time. Oh, so the word which is bothering me is “childlike”! Yes that is it.

I embrace the person who continues to grow and develop AND is also an adult who is responsible and conscious. An adult does not have to be conservative and muffled. Let me be a HUMAN BEING who can mostly stand on my own two feet, add value to my community, embrace the wonder and the mystery, and continually evolve into my best self.